Starting with my all time favorite quote:

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back towards the technology – not the other way around.” – Steve Jobs

So, where it all began?

Where it all began! Something worth to ponder upon, isn’t it? 🙂

Well, believe it or not, there was a time when I was hopelessly lost in the decision to choose a perfect career. Been brought up in a humble city from southern parts of Tamil Nadu (India), like many other aspiring professionals in the field I was literally battling between career options – Software & IT/Graphics & Web Designing.

All the while, battling the confusion in my mind, I even cared to join an event management company as a graphic designer intern without having any proper vision of my career. Can you imagine my level of confusion? 😛

Did the break happen?

Indeed, ‘Lumos’ it is! After completing my Masters in Multimedia Technology and Bachelors in Information Technology previously, I joined this web designing company as an intern, as my job offer from my campus recruitment was deferred.

After 6 months of dire waiting, I finally received the exciting news regarding my job offer at Wipro for the position of a developer(Quite a relief I should say). But it came with its own woes. I never did programming in my life. Not during my bachelors nor during my masters!

How did it go?

We all have these nightmares where we see that we are busy giving exams in a hall and the time ticks by. Waking up is a big relief! But for me, the first day of training in Wipro was an actual nightmare.

I was totally out of place. Bored by the Siebel CRM tool presentation that was handled by the training team, I kept contemplating if this was my right cup of tea ?!!! Unsure of how will I fit in…if ever 😛

A month went by. But I was still completely lost. My peers comforted me by saying that this is how the way things are. However, I kept looking for something which will inspire me outright.

I never understood a thing about Siebel CRM tool. I understood what is CRM but I couldn’t understand how Siebel tool works, the whole Siebel tool seemed clumsy and was not at all user intuitive. I was clueless about how things worked. And worst of all, I was thinking of going back to web designing and graphics. What else could have done at that point?

So, when did I get the real change?

When there is a will, there is a way. Despite my wee knowledge in the fields of graphic designing, I was in no mood of going back to graphic web designing where I would have made less half of what I was being offered at Wipro.

Instead, something spectacular happened. I got a news that I was being assigned to a Salesforce CRM project. The team was in need of additional resource to handle the high demand in salesforce projects

It was another dreadful night. One unknown thing to another! Felt like I had no control over my own career decision. Contemplated on rejecting the deal…thought of quitting the job. Thankfully didn’t do either! 😀

Was it any different?

Much different to be honest! Back then Salesforce was a cloud CRM tool and one of my colleagues was kind enough to educate me about the Salesforce Developers forum and I found it rather easy to grasp. My secret affair with web development helped me get through because both Visualforce and Apex were surprisingly similar to web development languages. Who would have guessed!

As I came from a Siebel background the entire thing seemed all the more convenient for me. I still remember that it took precisely less than a day to build my first Salesforce application. WOAH!!!

Can you beat that? On the contrary, the two weeks I had spent in the Siebel hand-on, I practically built just an application page. LOL! So, definitely, it was an exciting day for me. It seemed like I was finally doing something that I liked.

I will never forget that day because I started feeling like an expert after wrapping up my first ever mini application in Salesforce. From that day I imbibed the spirit of Salesforce into my life.

I even bored my parents to death talking about Salesforce! LOL. I was quickly in line with the motto and objective of Salesforce and I am grateful to #Trailhead, #TrailblazerCommunity& #Salesforce.

And that’s how #MySalesforceJourney started. As years passed by, I took enough time to learn the platform from its roots. I started to read through all the release documents (Back in those days we didn’t have much exposure to youtube videos on Salesforce). From 2015 I got introduced myself to #Trailheads. Blazed through many trails. Recently am being more serious about it. Trailhead has transformed into a main learning platform for aspiring newbies in Salesforce. With all my Salesforce knowledge stacked up on my brain, I wanted to let it out by sharing it with others. The only way I could envision was to blog about Salesforce which was the key for the birth of this blog #GuhasDevforce.

#UnExpectedSurprises / #TruningPoints:

What I didn’t expect was the Offer from Acumen Solutions(One of Top10 Global Strategic Partners for Salesforce). Back in those days, I was more involved (I’m still involved as a Co-Host) in Salesforce Developer groups to keep myself updated on the recent updates from Salesforce releases. We had a #SalesforceSaturday(formerly called as #Code&Coffee on a Saturday) event happening in our WashingtonDC Salesforce Developer group (@DCSalesforceDG). We did a Superbadge on that Saturday. I love the way they designed the session, where we had to present on how we solved the challenge for that Superbadge. I wasn’t realizing that the presentation which I made was going to be a big turning point in my life. when I completed my presentation the recruiter from Acumen Solutions (AcumenSolutions was the venue host) approached with an offer for an interview on the next week. It was a total surprise, and the interview went really well and finally, I made it through! Who would deny such an offer from a Global Strategic Partner of Salesforce! 😃

But that’s not all for the surprise elements in my Salesforce journey. I was constantly involving in all the Salesforce Dev meetups. As the group was growing exponentially in Washington DC, the leadership needed some help scheduling meetups and organizing them. While talking to a leader in the meetup, I was asked if I wanted to volunteer into the organizing and helping leaders with meetup activities. I was so honored and humbled to get a chance to give back to our amazing #SalesforceOhana #TrailblazerCommunity. I immediately accepted it! It was not only me, we had 2 other group members joining in. That marked the birth of our #CoreTeam(2 Leaders, 3 Co-Host/Co-organizers). We had an amazing growth in Washington DC, growing from 700 to 940+ people in just 1 year. That’s an exponential growth for a developer group in a federal city like Washington DC. This shows the tech community of Salesforce is booming in DC. And Today, I’m really proud of being 1 among the #CoreTeam where I could put my creativity and ideas to help our Leaders groom this group into a huge Success Story one day! #GrowingStrong

#CertificationJourney:

Blazed from 2 certifications to 8 certifications in recent two years. Now I’m a proud 8X certified marching towards 10X mark by end of 2017. Also Aspiring towards the #CTA club in Salesforce! 🙂

#MyInspiration:

After all these years of roller coaster journey, I was totally amazed when I saw my tweet(Tweet Post) being liked/acknowledged by @Benioff (Marc Benioff – CEO Salesforce). This one like made me feel that it’s a lot of motivation & direction to proceed further in what am doing in my career and to our #TrailBlazerCommunity

I’m now professionally #MarriedToSalesforce ! 😃

What am I doing now?

Now, I’m Senior Technical Consultant at Acumen Solutions working in SalesForce CRM development projects for our customers. I’m also 8X Certified, SalesforceBlogger, Speaker& Co-HostSalesforce Developer Group in WashingtonDC. I come with 6+ years of Salesforce Development & Platform expertise and before that, I was a Freelance Graphics Designer & Web Designer.